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My Goals for Staying Healthy in 2010

posted 31st March 2010    Written by: Heather Rae    CATEGORY: Heather Rae, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2

Back in February, I compiled a list of 20 things I plan to do in 2010.  And then, of course, I got sidetracked by life and sort of forgot about them.

That’s the thing with setting goals.  If you don’t keep them fresh in your mind, you lose track. Heck, if enough time goes by, you’re likely to forget what they were all together.

Hence, I thought I should review my goals to see if I’m making any progress.

Looking at my list, one section in particular jumped out at me:  Be Healthy.

I’ve discovered that being a writer is not the healthiest of professions.  Here’s an example of my typical day:  I get out of bed, make breakfast, turn on the computer and sit down for my first round of writing.  A few hours later I get up and get dressed.  Then I walk back into the living room, turn on my computer and sit down for another round of writing.  It goes on like that all day.

You could say I’m pretty sedentary.

So a focus on being healthy this year is super important. The good thing is, I have my list of goals to guide me in staying healthy.  And they’re pretty specific — goals that are less like “eat healthy food” and more like “take a cooking class that focuses on preparing healthy meals”.

I think goals that are super specific like this are easier to stick to.  Not to mention, a goal of attending a cooking class seems doable.  Eat healthy in general — well, that can feel overwhelming.  And if you slip up, you might decide to give up all together.  I strongly believe in baby steps.

It’s now been almost two months since I set my goals for being healthy in 2010.  As a way of holding myself accountable, I’d like to share my progress with you.

  1. Take an intro lesson at a rock climbing gym:  Nope, not yet.  But Steven and I are thinking of doing this one together.  We even have some rock climbing friends that have offered to take us the next time they head out.  This could be a win very soon.
  2. Take a cooking class that focuses on preparing healthy meals:  The shame.  I haven’t done this either.  I saw a great deal on a cooking class recently, and then I missed it because I forgot to pay in time to get the deal.  Note to self — don’t procrastinate.
  3. Master the Experienced Beginners level of my pole dancing class and move to Intermediate classes:  I’m close.  To graduate from the Experienced Beginners class, I have to master nine spins.  So far, I’ve got seven down.  Only two to go.
  4. Train for and complete a half marathon:  I’ve started the process and picked a training plan.  Now I just to need to decide which half marathon to sign up for.  Any suggestions?

That’s the progress I’ve made so far.  And I’ve decided something — I need a way to keep my goals for 2010 front and center in my mind.  I think I’ll revert back to what my mother did with my 4th grade art projects — I’ll hang my list on the refrigerator.

So tell me, did you set any goals this year that relate to being healthy?  What were they?  Have you kept up with your goals or made progress?  What’s kept you working at them?  Has anything stopped you from working on your goals?

photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

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Past, Meet Future

posted 30th March 2010    Written by: Nicole Antoinette    CATEGORY: Love/Relationships, Nicole Antoinette, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2

I’ve been doing the big question thing lately. The thing where I’m all, “What now?” and “What next?” and “With who?” and “My life?!”

When I’m big question-ey like this, it’s usually about the fact that I want things that feel contradictory. I want to stay and I want to go. I want him and I want to be by myself, and I get stuck in the questions and focus too much on the unknown of what’s to come and not enough on where I’ve been and what I’ve already accomplished.

The past, for me, is perspective, it’s why I’ve been keeping journals for as long as I’ve known what pen and paper can do together, and I try to remind myself during the big question times that I can take pause and look back.

When I do this, I continue to find that everything I thought was soul crushingly bad, everything I thought I’d never come out the other side of, has turned out just fine. The big decisions worked themselves out and it’s just fine and I’m that much stronger and nothing is as horrifying and destructive as it seems when you’re in the hole of it.

I flipped through an old journal recently and came across an entry I wrote about love (although really, isn’t everything about love in some way?), but this particular entry caught my attention because it came from the point in a past relationship that terrifies me about all future relationships. The point where I cared about him enough to know that I’d give up way too much of myself to spend the rest of my life curled up inside his heart.

I’m so lonely tonight. Maybe because hotels are anonymous and isolating places, or maybe because I’ve spent so many nights being with someone else that I’ve forgotten how to be by myself. I need to get out of this lonely place. Or, I need to stop feeling like being lonely is a weakness, that it’s some kind of sign that I’m not as self sufficient as I’d like to be.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about sacrifice, about what parts of ourselves, our lives, and our opportunities we give up for other people. Sometimes, it’s a sacrifice that someone else asks us to make: not talking to an ex, relocating to a new city, changing our sleeping habits, but sometimes it’s a sacrifice we know we have to make: letting go of our past, being less selfish, letting someone in. For me, the deepest sacrifices are the private ones, the things we give up secretly, the things we don’t ever tell the other person we’re giving up for them.

I’ve been there, and maybe I’m there now because if I had to sacrifice everything to be with him, I would. That’s a wildly dramatic thing to say, isn’t it? But it’s how I think sometimes, in grossly over exaggerated statements. I don’t mean to be so dramatic, but for some reason my soul finds comfort in hyperbolic absurdity.

So here we are, him and I, wherever “here” is, and I’m wondering about my priorities, about whether the path I’m taking and what I’m choosing aren’t in fact things that I’ll look back on and regret. My therapist says that I should stop obsessing about regret, because “in a predictable twist of fate, we usually spend so much energy obsessing about not letting something happen that it happens anyway.

She has been right about a lot of stuff over the past year, so I’m considering believing her about this…

Maybe it’s because I’m surrounded by friends who are married, or engaged, or in serious relationships, friends who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant, or maybe it’s this journal entry from 2007, but it all has me wondering if it’s possible, I mean really possible, for me to have big love while still having everything else that I want at the same time.

And so, settling down and total freedom are having a fierce little go around in my head. And you know what? They better get their shit together soon and sort it out, because with all that shouting, it’s quite difficult to get anything else done.


photo credit: motone

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Being Myself. No Matter Who That Is.

posted 25th March 2010    Written by: Katie    CATEGORY: Katie, Love/Relationships, Season 2, What I've Learned

When I walked into my Student Psychologist, Mrs. R’s office during my Freshman year of high school, I had no idea what to expect.

I was hoping, at the very least for her to tell me how to stop feeling like a stranger in my own life, an issue that little did I know, would haunt me for years to come. The very first day that I spoke with Mrs. R, she gave me a mantra. After discussing my feelings of inadequacy due to my boyfriend at the time (who was 10 years older than me) and cheating on me constantly, she asked me to repeat after her;

“I am lovable, and loving, and deserve to be loved by a man who loves only me.”

I looked at her cockeyed.

She insisted that I repeat it. I did. Twenty times. She then told me that I had to write this mantra over and over, 100 times, and turn it into her the next day. She also asked me to focus on how it made me feel to say this.

She told me to think about the things that make me doubt that statement, and keep those in mind when I write it.

Whatever, lady. I came here for help, not homework. Despite my negative attitude and lack of expectations, I did it. About halfway through, something miraculous happened.

I began to believe it.

This says a lot for someone who had zero self-confidence. Something clicked and made me realize that no matter what anyone did to me, said about me, or thought about me, I was who I was, and there are people out there who this will be good enough for. Wasting time with people who don’t respect you, understand you, or allow you to be YOU is a waste of your time and theirs.

I wasn’t cured in that moment.  This was still Freshman year. and I was still depressed, and had a very serious life decision (literally) ahead of me.

I would run into another issue, that still affects me now;  trying to be myself with people who I care about but don’t agree with my personal beliefs or actions.

I dated a man for a year and a half who I loved and thought was ‘the one’. The problem? My writing, my political preferences,  and friend selections, among other things–weren’t the same as his. The first time I introduced him to one of my best friends, my best friend vetoed him immediately.

“He’s not for you, Katie. He’s too different. He doesn’t appreciate who you are so much as he wants to change you.”

I ignored it, and dated the man who continually wanted me, as long as I wanted the same things that he wanted. The man who believed in me as long as I believed in the same things he did. I started to be okay with changing myself, pretending to be something I wasn’t, as long as it meant he would love me.

Fact: He loved me…but only IF [insert stipulation here].
Translation: He didn’t love me. He loved who he wanted me to be.

Inevitably we broke up. It was one of the most difficult experiences of my entire life, because when we broke up, I had become so used to being whoever he wanted me to be, that  I had no idea who I was.

After months and months of a deep depression, I finally went back to basics.  Back to freshman year of high school with Mrs. R.

“I am lovable and lovable, and deserve to be loved by a man who loves only me.”

“I am who I am.”  Whatever I was feeling was okay, because they were my feelings. Whatever I believed was okay, because they were my beliefs. I owned the words “My” and “Mine” and made them very personal. I took pride in saying things that began with “My” or “Mine.” Even now, before I say anything about myself and my personal stance, I rethink it before I say it.

I ask myself  “Is this who I am? Or am I just saying it to be accepted?  Believe in what you’re saying, and be honest.”

I literally sat down and got real with myself. With pen and paper in hand, I wrote down who I was, beginning with my name, and went through each area of my life that had meaning. From family values, to the way I like my steak cooked, I wrote it down. I posted different facts about me all over my house.  Some on my refrigerator, a few on my my bathroom mirror, and others on my front door. In a world that is constantly telling us what to do, or who to be, it’s important to remind ourselves of the only person we ‘should’ be.

The person we’re best at being – ourselves.

“I am who I am, I’ve been through what I’ve been through, and these things make up the person that I am, which is wonderful.”

Being myself, no matter who it is, has been a difficult lesson, but most rewarding. How do you learn it? Find out who you are, and be who you are, no matter what. Don’t be ashamed of your beliefs, preferences, or views. They are yours, YOU are yours.

Find out who you are, and own it.

And if you’d like to claim it here in the comments, who am I to stop you?

*photo credit: shaybonham

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You Owe It to the World to Be Yourself

posted 24th March 2010    Written by: Heather Rae    CATEGORY: Heather Rae, Inspiration, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” –Oscar Wilde

I recently finished reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.  If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a chronicle of Gretchen’s life as she spends a year following the advice of happiness gurus and researchers alike, attempting to make herself happier.

As part of the project, Gretchen made a list of Twelve Commandments, or overarching principles, that she would use as a guide during her year of improved happiness.  The first of these commandments was:  Be Gretchen.

At first glance, this particular commandment didn’t stand out to me.  You’ve probably heard this advice innumerable times — from your mom, your dad, a teacher, a friend.

Just be yourself.

I always took this advice to mean to act like yourself.  Such as, if you’re in a new social situation or meeting new people, just act like yourself and people will like you.

But here’s what I’ve come to realize:  there’s more to that advice than simply acting like yourself.  Be yourself also encompasses accepting yourself. Be proud of who you are; don’t apologize for what you like and what you don’t like.  Embrace the personality traits that make you unique, that make you you.

For instance, I’ve never been one to get really excited about going out to bars or clubs, especially late at night.  Sure, I’ve had some fun times on the dance floor until the wee hours.  But, in general, I enjoy going to sleep early.  I like waking up when the sun rises, not stumbling in from a night on the town and heading to bed.

For years, I felt bad about this tendency.  I had many friends that liked staying up late and going out at night. In an effort to not seem boring, I attempted to make myself enjoy those things too. When I did go out with them, I usually had a great time — so I took that as a sign that obviously I did enjoy being awake at 2:00 AM, mingling with other night owls at the bar.

But here’s the thing — though I may enjoy that scenario on occasion, I can honestly say that if I followed that routine every weekend, I would collapse.  My body, my personality — I’m simply not made for it.

I’ve known for years that I’m an introvert.  I enjoy alone time.  Baking cupcakes, reading a good book or spending a weekend on an art project — that’s my idea of a good time. And yet, it has taken me years to accept these things in myself, to stop trying to change myself in an effort to fit some mythical mold of what society deems appropriate.

Are you an introvert, extrovert or somewhere in between?  Embrace the person that you are.  Don’t force yourself to be something that you’re not, simply because you think that’s the way you should be.

Don’t force yourself to like things just because you think you should enjoy them.

If you’re surrounded by a bunch of books worms and academics but what you really love is karaoke and rock climbing, then by all means, honor what you love.  Stand out from the crowd.  Be bold.  Be different.  Don’t attempt to squeeze yourself into a mold that simply doesn’t fit. Find the things that you enjoy — the things that make you feel like jumping out of bed in the morning and rushing off to do seize the day.

In the end, those are the things that will make you happy.

A happy person brings more joy to those around them than an unhappy person.  Thus, you owe it to the world to be yourself.

photo credit: pasotraspaso

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Heartbreak and Learning The Hard Way

posted 23rd March 2010    Written by: Nicole Antoinette    CATEGORY: Inspiration, Love/Relationships, Nicole Antoinette, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2, What I've Learned

There are two kinds of people, those who can take other people’s advice and those who have to learn the hard way.

I learn the hard way.

It probably has a lot to do with ego, with my thinking that someone else’s lesson just doesn’t apply to me, and it’s only after I’m thigh-deep in their same mud that I realize, “Huh, maybe I shouldn’t be so damn stubborn all the time.”

I’m trying to work on this, trying to get better at listening when people I care about sit me down to share something powerfully poignant because you know what? We, all of us, aren’t really that different from each other and when someone has been through it, I need to get better about internalizing their advice and finding the practical application of it in my own life.

Like most of my now memorable moments, the best advice I’ve ever received was something that just came up naturally, something she said in passing, something I wasn’t looking for, and yet I think about it at least once every single day.

I don’t remember the beginning of the conversation, what was said before it, but I was in NYC and she was in Italy and we were catching up online and filling each other in on the details of our week. She asked about the guy I was dating at the time, a guy I was too into to see out of, and I don’t remember what I told her about him, about us, but I remember what she said back.

“You know, not every guy is worth breaking your heart for.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, about how penetrable my boundaries are, and I’m struggling to understand where I end and everything else begins.

I’m an intense person, a person who doesn’t get into things without getting all in, and in some way or another I’ve been desperately in love with every single person in my life. Some days, my boundaries are so poorly defined and I let so many things into my heart that it actually feels like I’m in love with the world, like everything I have is riding on everyone and everything else and that each moment could be the best or most heartbreaking of my life.

So now what?

I mean, if she’s right (and of course she is) and every guy and every situation isn’t worth breaking my heart over, how do I protect myself? What does self protective moderation even look like? How do I go only part of the way in when I’ve spent 24 years see-sawing the all or nothing spectrum?

photo credit: Niffty

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